BIOGRAPHY:
Manuel Vason is a visionary artist practicing photography as a philosophical prism through which to engage with others, reflect on the self and expand the imaginal.
In particular, he considers the act of photographing as a durational performance of focusing attention on the appearance of things and event with the intention of keeping them alive.
In 2019, Vason completed a PhD at the University for Creative Arts (UK) investigating the frictional interdependency between photography and performance art.
Born in Padua (Italy) in 1974, Vason assisted some of the most celebrated fashion photographers of his generation in Milan, New York, Paris and London and while contributing to mainstream magazine like ID, Italian Vogue, Dazed & Confused and Sunday Times he matured an interest for Performance Art.
It was pointing the camera toward the ‘ephemeral action’ that urged Vason to adopt more critical and responsible approach to the medium and to position himself in front as well as behind the lens.
Since 1999, Vason has collaborated with more than two hundred and fifty international performance artists, produced seven publications and exhibited in numerous institutions worldwide.
MANUEL VASON'S NOTABLE PROJECTS:
Unframing Photography (2021 - on going): is a collaborative project aimed to question and expose deceptive narratives about photography that have helped the medium to grow an excessive influence in our contemporary society.
The PhotoPerformer (2014 - on going): is the name of Vason’s alter-ego.
The aim of this project is to merge photography and performance into an hybrid cross-practice through which to further expose, deconstruct and transform his predominant, white, male, privileged perspective.
Replay, Rethink, Reframe (2015): motivated by the urge to reconnect with some artists influential for my artistic development, the project placed in confrontation their original actions with my response and generate an interplay with the two photographs generated. The act of ‘re-framing’ represents the perpetual process of identification and differentiation my photography searches to activate and perform.
Double Exposures (2012 - 2015): is a collaborative venture between Manuel Vason and forty-five of the most visually arresting artists working with performance in the UK. For Double Exposures, Vason has worked with two groups of artists, using two distinct types of collaboration, to produce a series of diptychs.
Becoming an Image (2009 - on going): is Vason’s first body of work, which rather than emerging from a series of collaborations with individual artists, develops out of group environments and explores the workshop as a site for co-creation. The point of departure is the concept of ‘becoming’ intended to establish a sense of intensified affection among the group to galvanise the differences and composed another conceptual unified body, which we called image.
STILL_MOVIL (2008 - 2013): is Manuel Vason’s first collection of co-creations with 45 choreographers, dancers and movement practitioners. based across South America. Commissioned by la Red Suramericana de Danza, the project explores stillness as a choreographic composition held on the photographic space. Each image was conceived as a new dance piece.
Encounters (2002 - 2007): is Manuel Vason’s second extensive collection of photographic collaborations with artists working in Performance Art. Through extensive dialogue-based modes of collaboration, beautifully stylised images question relations and boundaries between the documentation and artwork, body and space, time and memory.
Exposures (2000 - 2002): is Manuel Vason’s first collection of collaborative photographs with nineteen of the most acclaimed and controversial practitioners in Britain in the early 2000s; artists who were disrupting the norm, breaking the rules and provoking debate by exposing the body in all its diversities, difficulties and desires.
Live Gallery (1999 - 2003): is Manuel Vason’s first project which led him to transform a photographic session into a public performance. A site-specific project, which took place within different communities and locations and provoked members of the public to perform an action in front a 10 x 8 inches Polaroid camera. The resultant images where instantly displayed as a temporary exhibition.